5 Ways The Internet of Medical Things Is Revolutionizing Senior Care

Virtual home assistants and portable diagnostic devices will help provide better elder care and in turn control medical costs.

In 2000, about 10% of the world’s population were age 60 or over. By 2015 that had risen to 12%. United Nations projections indicate that will have increased to 16% by 2030, and jumped to 22% by 2050. The percentages may not seem alarming, but to put this into perspective, let’s look at the following: by 2025, the world’s population is set to be 8 billion, of which approximately 15%, or 1.2 billion, will be elderly. Essentially, that is almost equivalent to the population of the second most populous country in the world–India. Another alarming statistic is the projected decline in the working-age population (25-59) between 2030 and 2050, meaning that there will be fewer people to support the growing elderly population–financially and otherwise.

But why does this matter so much? The answer is medical costs! Healthcare expenditure on the elderly is a growing concern, as it accounts for a higher share of expenditure compared to other age groups.

1. Vitals-Tracking Wearables

A majority of seniors suffer from non-communicable diseases, including cardiac ailments, diabetes and hypertension. For cardiac patients, heart monitors that can monitor ailments such as arrhythmia and can alert doctors to adverse events in real time and help prevent further complications. For example, InfoBionic’s MoMe Kardia device does exactly that. Other monitors, like Cortrium’s C3 Holter monitor and Uber Diagnostic’s CardioTrack, are also available. “Smart” glucometers such as Dario that can communicate measured blood glucose readings to an app on a smartphone for storage, tracking and managing diabetes can help elderly patients better manage their diabetes. Regular activity monitoring and heart rate monitoring can be achieved by one of several available consumer wearable devices and smartwatches. Even when hospitalized, IoMT platforms such as the one provided by Vitls can help nurses and off-campus physicians continuously monitor seniors’ vital signs without disturbing patients.

2. Medication Adherence Tools

Seniors have several medications they need to take, and with age, remembering everything becomes a challenge. Missed doses can result in exacerbation of medical conditions, and in some severe cases can even lead to serious consequences requiring hospitalization. Several IoMT products address this challenge by helping users remember when to take their medication. Products from AdhereTech, Amiko.IO, MyUBox, MedMinder and Vitality GlowCaps tackle this challenge in their own unique ways, helping the healthcare industry by saving on costs.

3. Virtual Home Assistants

Quite a few seniors live alone or with their spouses or partners, who are also most often likely to be elderly, and require daily assistance as well as companionship. Virtual assistants like Catalia Health’s Mabu robot or Intuition Robotics ElliQ robot serve this purpose well. Not only do these interact with seniors via voice and touchscreens, they can also help them stay connected with their family and friends digitally–via social media platforms and video chat.

Additionally, they can help patients remember to take their medications, take notes and remind patients about their care providers’ medical advice. Apart from their presence in seniors’ homes, these virtual assistants can also be reached via text/mobile phones through chat. Apart from robots, another category of virtual assistants is voice-interactive digital assistants like Amazon Echo or the healthcare-specific version provided by Lenovo Health in partnership with Orbita Health. For seniors, such devices can be used for medication adherence and care coordination, as well as patient engagement, all areas in which (considerable) healthcare cost savings can be made.

4. Portable Diagnostics Devices

The senior age group needs to have biomarkers tested more frequently than others to monitor existing conditions, diagnose new ones and check on overall well-being. Instead of frequently visiting a pathology laboratory for getting urine or blood tests done, smart and portable diagnostics devices can help seniors perform such tests in the comfort of their homes, and get results in formats that allow them to be instantly shared with their care providers. Consider the Scanadu Urine Kit for biomarker analysis or the Cue device that can test Vitamin D levels. In the future, additional tests may become available that will expand the potential of home testing for seniors. The added convenience means seniors can perform diagnostic tests more frequently, helping to diagnose diseases and thus to begin treatment sooner, ensuring complications are prevented to save avoidable healthcare costs.

5. Personal Emergency Response Systems

The concept is well known for many elder care market participants. Several products are already well established and serve many needs of seniors, inside and outside of their residences, such as fall detection, emergency assistance and navigation guidance back to residence (for dementia patients, for example) or even boundary perimeter breach alerts (for Alzheimer’s patients, for example). Some products even include additional features such as medication reminders. Several companies, ranging from healthcare majors such as Philips to smaller companies and startups like Everon, Qmedic, Lively, Motech, MobileHelp, Jupl and UnaliWear, provide these products. In addition, a unique concept that goes beyond simple fall detection is that of ActiveProtective’s smart belt, which detects falls and deploys air bags to prevent fall-related injuries and uses Bluetooth technology to trigger an alert to designated emergency contacts. Technologies such as these can help save avoidable fall-related healthcare costs.